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Excerpt
Bone River
The air was crisp and expectant. The storm had swept away the clouds, and the
sun was shining, a brisk, chill breeze blowing off the water, summer's warmth
gone for good. Sodden leaves from the alders and maples scattered over
the grass, gold and orange and brown. Fallen branches lay cracked and
splintered all about. I stepped through the clutter on the narrow porch,
beaten old chairs and piles of nets and an old pair of long oystering
tongs, and went down the stairs to the yard.
I was at the river before I realized I was heading toward it. I stared down
into the churning water, the long grass of the bank trailing in its
eddies, the currents at the shore lapping more roughly with the stirring
up of the storm and the added rain. Usually I could see to the bottom
here at the shore, but not this morning; it was murky and mysterious
today.
It was then I heard the noise that had me glancing toward the mouth of the
river where it plunged into Shoalwater Bay. There, only a few yards away,
stood a great blue heron, ruffling its feathers—the sound I'd heard. I'd
never been so close to one before, and I froze, catching my breath in
surprise. The two of us stared at each other, his dark eye and long
yellow beak, the shaggy feathered tuft of his chest. For long moments I
didn't move, but then, suddenly, he lifted his dark wings. I was so close
the air they stirred pulsed against my skin. I watched him fly off toward
the bay, and it was a moment before I dropped my gaze again, before I
noticed the strangeness of where he'd been standing.
The bank had fallen away. This was not uncommon; the river was constantly
eroding the banks. But this cut was large—at least three feet of the
shore had fallen into the river, and it looked odd, cleanly shored, as if
the chunk had been cut away in one swipe of a knife, not bits and pieces
falling and crumbling the way it usually did. I picked up the hem of my
skirt—already sodden from the wet grass, as were my boots—and stepped
down to see. The sheared clay bank did not look like clay, but
something…strange. Beneath a thin layer of clay was something mottled,
discolored, with light and dark striations. Hesitantly, I scraped it with
my gloved finger. It didn't give at all when I pressed it.
It was narrowly ridged, nothing natural. Something was buried here, and I
was on my knees in the mud before I knew it, heedless of my skirts or the
river, scraping at it gingerly at first, and then, as my excitement grew,
scrabbling like an animal. I could not get at it quickly enough. I bent
to dig around it, but there was no around. When I scraped away,
there was more, and more, a wall of ridges and coils that stretched a
foot and a half wide before I decided I couldn't get at it with my hands
alone.
I ran back to the house for a shovel and pick, half fearful that it would have
disappeared when I returned. But no, it was still there, no figment of my
imagination. I took up the shovel and dug and scraped, as careful as I
could be through my excitement, because I didn't know where it ended and
I didn't want to do any damage. It began to reveal itself: reeds woven in
a pattern of dark and light—an Indian basket—but a design I didn't know.
The damn thing was huge, the biggest basket I'd ever seen; there seemed
to be no end to it. I was sweating in the chill; I took off my coat and
laid it on the bank and kept going. I thought of how that heron had
stared at me, summoning me to look, as if this was something he
meant for me to find.
I was wet to my knees and filthy with clay by the time I had it half dug out of
the bank. I tried to tilt it loose, but it was caught fast, and it felt
solid, which told me there was something inside. I tried to rock it,
cursed when it didn't budge, and grabbed the pick again. A shadow crossed
the water.
Excerpted from Bone River by Megan Chance. Copyright © 2012 by Megan Chance. Excerpted by permission of Amazon Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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